


Equivalent Exchange

by Cards_Slash



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, M/M, Magic Color-Changing Virgin Identifying Sand (tm), Virgin sacrifices
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2015-06-03
Packaged: 2018-04-02 14:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4063804
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cards_Slash/pseuds/Cards_Slash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malik works in the barracks where the virgin sacrifices are brought to be purified for six weeks before they are given to the Gods for their quarterly meal.  He's lived through dozens of virgins begging him for sex to spare their lives and never felt tempted once.  Then there was Altair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equivalent Exchange

**Author's Note:**

> I can't even begin to explain this story. I'm sorry.

Work started on Mondays (more or less) every fourth month without fail. The gatherers went out into the sprawling cities that covered the kingdom to search through the pitiful population for anyone unworthy of passing his (or her) genetics onto the next generation. Primarily, they found unhappy, foul examples of humanity riddled with faults (physical or otherwise) that were dragged back to the barracks at the foot of the great mountain. The sacrifices came in gilded cages, barred on all sides for the amusement of the people that gathered around the edges of the streets to gawk at them. The virgins with their black-sacked heads and their brittle bodies, begging for anyone that would save them from this final indignity. The bright colored slashes of the holy sand thrown across their bodies (positively identifying them as virgins) making for a colorful show for children too young to understand what it meant.

Malik’s job didn’t start until the sacrifices made it to the barracks. He stood with two dozen other guards, waiting for the unwanted bastards to be separated into their halls. The first hall for the sick or unhealthy, the second for the women, the third for the men and the fourth for the unusually tempting. The place where the conniving and physically pleasing sacrifices went. There were three cells in the fourth hall, separated by long tunnels and guarded by a single man or woman for the whole duration of the month. 

The fourth hall was pure hell. Malik had spent the last month of work ignoring the pitiful cries of a persistently beautiful woman that begged him for his charity until he was exhausted from the effort of not ripping her cell door open and fucking her until she couldn’t speak another word. He hadn’t, in the end, because he disliked the way her eyes sat on her face and the annoying squeal of her voice. The fact that she was also virtually insane deterred him as well.

Fourth hall paid three times the wage of the other halls and provided benefits like special quarters for him and his family (that was his brother). His loyalty and endurance (so they said) was proof that he was truly devoted to the Gods and the people that worshipped them. So long as he continued to do well and never strayed (or was tempted) he could continue to work the fourth hall. (But if he failed, they would take a dull knife to his penis and when common sense did not prevail in keeping him from having sex with raving insane women begging for his cock, the very notion of that punishment often did.)

Malik stood with the other two guards, waiting while the bent old man that sorted the sacrifices rated them on beauty and cunning. He squinted at the sand splashed across their bodies and the colors reflected in the glitter that clung to their exposed skin. The parade went on for the better part of two hours. In that time he went from vaguely interested in this month’s fresh crop of sacrifices to bored to starving. By the time the gatherers were dragging the man with the glittering blue sand all over his arms out of the last cart, Malik had surpassed starvation and wandered into delirious with hunger. He took note of the man being dragged by ropes across the ground only because of the sound his body made when he threw it back onto the stones. His feet were kicking against the ground trying to slow down the progression toward the old man and failing. He did not scream or beg the way the others had but try to reach out and grab at the people restraining him. 

“Fourth,” the old man said to absolutely nobody’s surprise. 

The other two guards that worked the fourth hall with him were older men, frail and aged (long past the ripe time of life for deflowering desperate virgins) and they scuttled away from the challenge being pulled across the forum without any sense of shame. Malik sighed as he peeled himself out of the lazy slouch he’d been managing against the wall. When the first of the gatherers reached him, they threw the end of the rope at Malik with a grateful smile. The others went behind the new sacrifice and pushed until he was over the threshold and the metal gate could be slammed into place. 

“There’s no point in fighting now. There’s no way out,” Malik said. He let go of the rope and gave the man a chance to slam himself against the bars. His aggravation was blunt, low sounds absent of the pain he had to be inflicting upon himself. It went on for an embarrassing amount of time before the man relented and his legs gave out under him. The black sack over his face was damp from perspiration, pushed out and pulled it again by his breath. “Get up,” Malik said. “I’ll take you to the baths and then to a bed. You can fight again tomorrow.”

Then he picked up the ropes that were tied around this man’s arms tight enough they’d drawn blood and pulled on them. He dragged the man when he didn’t walk, down the hallway that extended for what felt like an eternity (even without having to pull someone) to the bath. He pulled the man over until he was on the edge of the sweet-scented water and when the man did nothing, he put his foot on him and kicked him into it. Blood poured away from him like a great brown cloud, spreading instantly through the milky water. The blue of the sand bled away in tiny tendrils. But the color remained on his arms between the burns from the rope. He reared up out of the water with a great splash and finally put his own hands to good use to tear the black sack off his face. 

“Ha!” Malik said when he saw his face. “You are thirty at least.”

Oh and the man looked at him as if he were the stupidest of things he’d ever seen. His face was handsome. It was an odd collection of pieces that made for an enticing whole. His eyes were intense enough to give the aura of a glow, his nose was straight and his lips were full. The only blemish was a scar that ran across his lips and even that seemed to somehow contribute to the murderous kind of attractiveness of his face. His clothes were not the clothes of a peasant but not anything a noble might have worn either. They indicated he had a job or belonged to some sect or another. They were worn but obviously well made. The muscles standing out under the damp cling of his sleeves meant he was used to labor. So he was strong, attractive and employed but still not worthy of catching the attention of someone kind enough to grant him a reprieve from this fate. 

“Are you dull?” Malik asked. “Ill? Is there something wrong your body in areas I cannot see?”

The man reared back a moment and then spit into his face. He was violently pleased at the splatter across Malik’s cheeks even as he sank back into the water with a quick-smirk. 

“Ah, well never mind. That answers my question.” Malik scooped the water up to rinse off his face and then stood. “You have a minute to finish cleaning yourself then I will show you to your room.”

\--

Installing the sacrifice in his room had gone far better than he supposed it would have. He went with disappointing ease. Then he stood in the room a moment before coming back to the bars with his arm stretched out in front of him to indicate he’d like to be unbound. 

“If you want something, ask,” Malik said. 

The sacrifice stared at him a moment and then turned around and left the doorway again. He was dripping water from his clothes, shivering at the chill and still casually looking at his surroundings.

\--

The truth was, most of the time spent guarding sacrifices involved amusing oneself. Malik had taken up cartography for fun and his brother had started selling his maps for extra money. Now he had the joy of doing something he enjoyed for money. (He did not enjoy making maps for money.) When that failed to keep him interested, he had a variety of other amusements. 

Then there was standing outside of the cell door watching the man unravel the ropes that had been tied so securely they ripped his clothing and peeled away his skin. He managed it in the brief minutes that Malik had not been looking. The ropes were dropped by the cell door and the man set about pulling his clothes off.

His body (unfortunately for Malik) was perfect. The few visible scars he’d attained in his life did nothing to distract from the magnificent masculine perfection of his body. His confidence in stripping was not abrasive until his lips quirked up at the edges to indicate he was aware of the effect he had on those who looked at him. (A fat lot of good that did him when he hadn’t managed to make anyone take enough of an interest to _fuck him_.)

“I think you will be quite a meal for the Gods,” Malik assured him. “Just as soon as we finish rubbing you down with spices to get rid of the smell of that arrogance.”

Oh but the bastard just smiled.

\--

Days were arbitrary things in the fourth hall where the only light was available from a round window no bigger than his fist that was set in such a way that the tiny slant of light that came through it never fell lower than a foot above Malik’s reach. Sometimes, when he stood on a stool he could run his fingers through the sunlight but most days he just watched it pass slowly along the wall until it went dim and gray. 

Six days passed, he made three maps and read two books. He fed the sacrifice his three daily meals, offered to let him bath six times (and was rejected six times) and spent a countless amount of time bored and waiting for the pleading, begging or bartering to begin. 

Six days of silence from the man in the cage. Six days of the shuffle of his feet from one end of the cell to the other. Six days of nothing.

\--

“Twenty eight,” is the very first thing the man said to him (on day seven). He was leaning against the wall by the barred door watching Malik work on his maps. The light was best there where the ambient glow inside the cell lit the dark hall outside. “I am not _thirty_.”

“I suppose if you think so lowly of the number it’s just as well you’ll never be.” Malik straightened up and rolled his neck to relieve the kink in it. “Do you have a name? Something you’d like to be called?”

The sacrifice was shirtless (still) the burns from the ropes on his arm had faded. His skin was dirty and still stained blue where the sand had hit him but otherwise he remained as perfect on day seven as he had on the first day. He shook his head at Malik’s question. 

“Twenty eight is not much better than thirty. In all the barracks there isn’t one sacrifice over the age twenty to be found. Something must be very wrong with you if you’ve made it so long.” Malik might have said more but the man went away from the door again. “Perhaps your personality!”

\--

Day eleven and the man had not spoken again. He had taken up doing exercises in his cell that made his filthy skin glisten with sweat. He ate with vigor even if he obviously did not care for the taste of the ceremonial spices in the food. (It was just as well that he chose to eat the food because if he’d protested, Malik would have been obligated to rub him down with the ceremonial oil on a daily basis and that was a hell he’d rather not imagine.) 

“What is wrong with you?” Malik asked. “Besides the failing of your personality?”

\--

By day thirteen, the man had taken to walking around his cell naked, picking at the itchy parts of his skin where the dirt was caked into the creases of his elbows and knees. His face was scruffy with a beard that would have to be shaved before he was presented for the sacrifice and his hair was a disgusting mat of caked dirt and sweat. 

These disgusting distractions aside, his ass was as attractive as the rest of his body. Even his dick (shamelessly on display) seemed enough to garner the attention of an available mate.

“You can strut around like a vain bird all you like. The fact remains you couldn’t convince anyone to fuck you in twenty eight years and the only use left for you is to feed the hunger of the Gods for the benefit of our people,” Malik said. 

The man made a light noise of amusement.

\--

But on day fifteen, the man came to the door and threw a pebble at him while he slept. The sky was overcast with impending rain and the air was thick and muggy even in the halls. The man said, “I want a bath.”

Malik was sworn to look after the sacrifices with care and compassion until they were dragged (usually screaming) out of the halls and up the mountain to be eaten by the Gods. Normally, by day fifteen, he’d had to counsel the nervous sacrifices many times and offer drugs to calm their anxiety over their (painful, inevitable, ultimately grisly) deaths. This man leaned against the bars with all the expectation that he should be served immediately. His impatience was affront to Malik’s good will. 

“It is about time you did something about the smell. It was getting to be that I could hardly eat.” Then he picked himself up off his bed and went over to open the door. The hallway only led out to the locked gate but Malik motioned the man in front of him and kept a safe distance behind. They made it to the pool with the silvery water and the virgin gratefully sank into it. He scrubbed his body until it was pink and clean again. Then cleaned his hair and sat patiently while Malik shaved his face. 

\--

Day sixteen, perhaps prompted by interminable boredom, the man sat with his back against the door and said, “I like men.”

Malik scoffed at that excuse. “Then you should have had an easy time finding one. With a face like yours and that arrogance, I cannot imagine you lacked suitors that wanted to try their hand at breaking you.”

The man snorted. “They tried. They did not succeed.”

“Was your pride worth more than your life? You couldn’t find even one among all of mankind worthy enough to have you?” Malik half turned to look at the virgin and saw the amusement (not fear, not anxiety, not even slight worry) on his face at the words. His eyes were bright in the dim-light and his lips were pulled up in a smile that was out of place in these dark halls. “Perhaps you are telling the story wrong. You are the one that could not be found worthy. A fine physicality is not worth much when the burden of having it is dealing with such a poor personality.”

“Ah,” the man said, “so you wouldn’t fuck me if you had the chance?”

Malik scoffed again at that insinuation.

“I have seen how you look at me.” 

“There is little else to look at. Flatter yourself if you want but I will not be your savior. If you wished to avoid this fate then perhaps you should have been more diligent about preventing it. Twenty eight is a shameful age! Twenty eight? You should have had a child by now. A wife or a man if that’s what you wanted. You should have contributed to the legacy of our people. Go on and think yourself above everyone else, you will die with your pride intact and we will all be spared the poison of your loins.”

The man turned so he was pressed more full against the bars and whispered (like a sweet nothing) across the space between them. “I’d fuck you,” he said. Then he was up and away from the bars.

\--

The sand was sacred, a gift from the Gods themselves to assure that their meals were delivered promptly and accurately. It was brought down from the great mountain in sacks as colorless dust. The gatherers dispersed it into crowds in the cities and hunted the poor fools that were caught in its path. Children were spared but any eligible person over the age of sixteen was taken away until the quota for the quarterly feedings was met. 

The color the sand changed when it hit the skin of the virgins depended on the nature of the person it touched. The paler the sand, the less resistant the virgin. The more brilliant, bright and obnoxious the color (glittering and blue for instance) the more likely the virgin was to fight back. The Gods did not mind a feisty meal but they took offense to an empty plate. 

Sacrifices like Altair were flight risks and that was why they were clearly identified. When it was time to drag him up to the mountain, the priests and the deliverers would cut Altair’s legs to hobble him and tie him up like a proper sacrifice before they left him on the altar.

\--

It was day twenty before Malik realized the masterful job this unnamed virgin had done in manipulating him. He had put himself on display, remained aloof and defied all the odds in maintain composure as his death became more-and-more certain. Rather than fight, plead and beg he had _seduced_ Malik. 

All this Malik did not realize (outright) until the man was cupping water over his chest in a wanton display of sexual availability. It struck Malik (very suddenly) that he was considering how terrible a fate having his penis removed would be (really) if he’d already had the chance to fuck this man who desperately needed to be fucked. 

Really, someone should have done it by now just to humble this man’s pride a bit. 

“Oh you are very clever,” Malik said. 

The man smiled at him, palm against his chest following the water down to just below the surface where his fingers could curl around his dick and squeeze. He was _pleased_ not _embarrassed_. “You are very resistant.”

“You are twenty-eight,” Malik said. “Your age is proof enough that you aren’t worth the effort to fuck.”

“I’m twenty eight,” the man countered, “and I haven’t been touched. Imagine that for a moment. Where else would you find a prize like me? The men like you are so eager to rid themselves of a burden that leads to their death that they beg like dogs for anyone willing to stretch them open and make good use of them. They hound after women with greasy thighs to prove something of themselves. Who relieved you of your virginity, _Malik_? Some man with hairy palms and a sweating back that hunched over you in—”

Malik was permitted to use force when it was necessary. He was not obliged to explain himself so long as the virgin was delivered unmolested. He had never taken any sort of joy in hurting his charges but the satisfying feeling of his foot kicking this man backward into the water was worth all his years of restraint. The man landed on his back in the deepest part of the pool, displacing all the water over the edges in a great flood. His arms flailed for purchase as he tried to right himself and when he managed it, his shoulders were heaving as a deep-red horror suffused his face. There was no mask there but honest fear in those last seconds before he wiped the water from his face. 

“In any case,” Malik said, “you were wrong. I had a friend and we relieved ourselves of virginity together. Those men you speak of are abominations and when we find them, we string them up and gather all the children to throw sticks and rocks at them. They are filthy and disgusting and do not deserve to live.” 

The man did not speak to him but climb out of the bath and go alone to his cell. The bars slammed with the finality of separating them long before Malik arrived to lock them. 

\--

It was another two days before the man spoke again. Malik made his maps and read a book in that time. He convinced himself he did not care what the man had to say and could only (possibly) be concerned with counting down the remaining hours until he was free of this particular hell. 

“I heard a rumor,” the man said. “The barrack guards are allowed to swap the lives of one virgin for another.” He was sitting as he always did, with his back to the wall and his legs crossed before him. The lack of sun had dulled the color of his skin but the blue of the sand had not yet fully faded off his arms. It persisted now like a bruise over the scars of the rope burns.

Malik sat on the opposite side of the doorway with his mind groggy from too many days in the dark. “Yes. We are allowed to request one of the virgins under our care be released to be our wife or husband. Only once in a life time. And we are responsible for replacing the lost sacrifice.” 

“Have you used your sole request?” the man asked.

Malik laughed. “Is this how you barter for your life? With timid questions at the end of an endless assault? You assume that my desire to have you is not so severe that I wish to be saddled with your unpleasant personality for the rest of my life.”

“You assume I would stay with you,” the man said. Then, sensing that this response was not the best of his poor options, he sighed. “You would enjoy it.”

“Because you are so practiced?” Malik retorted. “Virgins are not enjoyable. That myth has been spread around by the desperate. Virgins are lovers without skill. There is nothing enjoyable about it.” He turned so his side was against the bars and he could see the man more clearly. “Explain to me what I would enjoy.”

“I imagine you would take great pleasure in gagging me with your dick,” he said. “Imagine how powerful you would feel with me bent under you, stretched open by your cock—the only one I’ve ever had—as you—”

“Stop,” Malik said. Those were things he would enjoy. He would enjoy them very much (and he might have convinced himself to enjoy them immediately). “I have no reason to believe you would allow it. I have no interest in hunting down another virgin. Fate chose you, if you wish to change that perhaps you should provide a more compelling reason.”

The man sighed. He picked at the knee of his pants and then looked at Malik again. “My name is Altair.” Then he got up and left again.

\--

Malik detested being led along. He abhorred manipulation. He hated nothing with so much venom as he hated a man that could not be trusted. That must have been what drove him to the outer gate where he asked the pleasant woman that attended the needs of the guards to bring him a bag of sand.

“Sand?” she asked him, “that is what you need? I have many things to offer.” 

While Malik would not normally say no to an opportunity to sate himself before returning to the single most infuriating virgin he’d ever protected, there was an honor code on the fourth hall that forbid him from taking advantage of her offer. She pouted all the way to retrieving the sand and back. He took it from her with his fingertips and she tried to grab him through the bars. (One could wonder how it was that she hadn’t already gotten enough sex from the other guards.) 

Altair was sitting by the gate when he returned but he got up onto his feet when Malik didn’t come to sit next to him. He looked as if he were going to open his mouth to ask a question in the split second it took to unravel the string holding the bag shut and fling all of the contents onto Altair’s body through the bars. The sand settled like fine dust all across his face, shoulders, chest, arms and stomach. It fell to his feet in little drifting clouds and was stuck in the creases of his mouth when he pressed his lips together. “Why?” Altair asked. He shook his head to shake the excess away but it clung to his skin as the translucent shimmer of it slowly mutated into a deeper color. It spread across his skin from the corner of his mouth to his navel in a wide rainbow of confusing colors. It was streaked in pale amber lines and deep indigo with undercurrents of vivid pink and murder-red. It covered his torso in a confusion of intentions and wrapped around his wrists in stripes. “What purpose does that serve?” he asked.

“Every color betrays another of your mixed intentions,” Malik answered. “Why should I save your life?”

“Because I will let you fuck me,” Altair said. He rested his many-colored hands against the bars of the cell door. “What other reason should I supply? What other reason matters? This sand tastes like piss.” He was trying to spit it out of his mouth and the best he could manage was to spread the blue that covered his lips down across his tongue and all along his gums. 

“I only have this option once and if I use it now, I have to find a man to condemn to death.” The livid red streaks that went across Altair’s chest betrayed the violence this man was capable of. The indigo his indifference to the Gods themselves. The pink and the amber his loyalty. The blue his manipulative nature. 

Altair leaned his weight forward against the bars and said, “would this be the first time you killed a man?”

No. 

That brought a curious tilt to Altair’s head, a strange understanding that dawned in his face that was entirely too comfortable with the notion of murder. “Did the men you condemned deserve to die?”

“Yes.”

“How do you know that?” Altair asked him. “Did they tell you?”

Malik rolled his eyes. “If they did not tell me, they told my brother when he asked them very politely.” Then he said, “Why are you a virgin?”

It was hard to maintain arrogance with pink and purple streaks across one’s face but Altair managed it (if only for a moment) before he said, “how did you kill them?”

Malik had not spoken the secrets of his pastimes to any man (or virgin) inside these walls. While society did not think poorly of the faceless few that rid the streets of disgusting examples of humanity, murder was (technically) still immoral and therefore illegal. “However I want,” Malik said. “Why are you a virgin?”

If it weren’t terrible to imagine it, he thought there was a look of lust that crossed Altair’s face before it was gone again. His smile lingered (pleased-and-arrogant) before he ran his fingers across the bars and turned around to walk away.

\--

In the morning, Altair woke him up with a rock thrown at his head. “Get up.” Followed very quickly by, “I know a virgin that deserves to die more than I do. Will that appease your _guilt_?” From the tone of the word it was obvious Altair did not believe him capable of the emotion.

“I do not have guilt,” Malik said. “I have doubt that you would make a worthwhile wife.”

Altair laughed at that insinuation. (Or the truth of the statement.) Then he leaned against the wall so he could see Malik as clearly as possible. “I give you my word that you can have me. You don’t seem like the sort that wants to burdened with a wife and since you are occupied here in these dreary tunnels for a six weeks at a time I imagine I’ll have enough freedom to do whatever I wish.”

“I am occupied for six weeks but then I am free for ten. Your freedom will be brief. I do not want a wife but a convenient lover is a valuable asset to have.” Malik sat up and looked at the still glittering colors on Altair’s skin before looking up at his face. His blue tongue was dragging at his blue lips while he frowned over these words. “I am starving when I leave these halls. You are not the first man to barter sex for his life. Nor the most attractive of people to attempt it.”

“But I will be the only one successful at it,” Altair said. “His name is Abbas and he lives in your city. I will tell you were. He likes to watch the little children. It’s only a matter of time before he becomes a hunched back old man sweating over young virgins.”

“Why should I believe you?” Malik asked.

“Don’t. Find any virgin you want to replace me. While you search, you can find and kill this man. Consider it a gift.”

“Do you imagine that if you speak as if this were already a closed deal that I’ll forget you have not given me a reason to spare your life? I haven’t forgotten.” Malik got up on his feet and went to stand on the opposite sides of the bars. 

Altair motioned him to lean in closer toward the bars and when Malik was close enough to feel the heat of his breath, he said, “ _liar_.” 

\--

The truth was that Malik did want Altair to live. He wanted to know why the man had weathered all these days without a sign of fear. He wanted to know what his body felt like twisting beneath his. He wanted to know why he’d gone so long without seeking a relief from the burden of virginity. He wanted to know what dark secrets he kept hidden in his chest and how many lives his hands had taken. The only chance he had at finding out the answers to his question was in sparing his life.

Malik left the bastard in his cell and went up the long hall to whistle for the captain. When he came, Malik explained his case to him. He was struck with a deep love for this virgin (Malik managed to speak this lie with sincerity he did not feel) and he’d very much like to invoke the right to take him as a wife and yes he was quite willing to go find another virgin to replace him. 

One of the older guards that often worked the fourth hall was summoned, Malik was given a length of rope and a sack of sand and sent out into the city to find a virgin replacement for his future bride. 

“This is a very stupid idea,” he mumbled to himself as he headed toward his home first.

\--

Kadar was helpful to the extreme. “This is a very stupid idea,” he said. “I cannot believe you have let yourself be taken in by this man! Doesn’t this defy the unspoken rule of the fourth hall? Won’t they leave you out of their secret club meetings for this?”

Malik rolled his eyes. “If they try, I’ll just let them have a turn with Altair and they will understand the necessity of freeing him.” That was a poor joke. The old men would die in the attempt to bed Altair either from being strangled for the effort or when their hearts gave out from exertion.

They made a conspicuous pair out in the city. Kadar wore the clothes of a man who did little with his time and Malik wore the clothes of an honored guard of the barracks. Kadar was well-fed and genial and Malik was armed and generally not in the mood for small-talk. They made their way through the city toward the poor district where the people lived in semi-constant poverty. The home they were looking for would have a distinct eagle mark on the door (so Altair said) and they walked for miles before they finally located it behind a pile of trash that smelled so bad even the scavenger dogs weren’t interested in rooting through it. 

Malik knocked at the door and Kadar stood to the side combing his fingers through the sand. “I wonder what color I would have turned with this sand,” Kadar said. “I think a nice reddish color. Violent but not too opposed to dying for the greater good.”

“You would have been pink as a newborn, easily crying your way to death,” Malik said. He knocked on the door again and again until it was pulled open by a greasy-looking man with his shirt half on. Kadar pinched a handful of sand between his fingers and threw it at the man. It drifted through the air in a cloud before dispersing away from his skin and falling uselessly to the floor.

“That did not happen how you said it would,” Kadar said idly.

Malik frowned at the sand on the floor and at the things that Altair had said to him. “There is no one that would have bothered with this man of their own will,” Malik said. He motioned at him. “He is filthy. I have heard he likes children.”

Kadar tightened the string on the bag of sand and reached behind his back to pull a knife from its sheath. “Do you like children?” Kadar asked. His smile was so inoffensive someone might have forgotten he meant to threaten them. 

“Get out of my house,” the man snapped. “I do not know what you are trying.” 

Malik punched him in the throat before he could waste enough breath to finish denying the words. While the man was gasping for breath and clawing at his own throat, he reached over to take the sand from Kadar, poured a little on his fingers and threw it on the man again. It ricocheted away from his puffed-red face and went drifting sadly to the floor. He closed the sack again and wound his fingers in the man’s greasy hair. “If you are honest with me, I won’t let my brother skin you. Do you like hurting the children?”

There was fear in the man’s eyes. He turned and tried to run so Malik sighed and motioned inward. Kadar looked very pleased about this turn of events as he slid in through the open front door with his knife. “I will ask again,” Kadar said. “Do not wait for me, Malik. There has to be a virgin somewhere.”

\--

Malik’s hunt had to be somewhat more precise than the average gatherer’s. He couldn’t throw a handful of sand into the air and claim whoever it landed on. Barracks guards were allowed this privilege but it could be easily taken away if a panic were incited. So he went looking for people that wouldn’t be missed from the city and threw surreptitious little clouds of sand at them hoping to find someone that hadn’t managed to con their way into someone’s bed. The sad truth remained that Altair’s version of events was common enough that even the least appealing of men could be saved from painful death by finding the right immoral benefactor. 

The hunt dragged on well into the afternoon when the sun started to drive people toward shady places and Malik was left sitting by a fountain with the dust resting on his thigh and the slowly dawning realization that he might not find a suitable replacement. There had to be some method of convincing Altair to tell him the secrets he was so keen on keeping. 

He was weighing the pros and cons of giving up this mad search when Kadar found him. There was a shocking lack of blood on his clothes (considering where Malik had left him) but good humor in his voice when he said, “you are in luck, brother. I found a virgin worth killing.” 

“Where?” Malik asked. Then he followed his brother back through the city, into the poor distract, past the pile of trash and into the home of the child rapist to the back room where two men were tied together. The greasy one that had met them at the door was sagging with shock and pain and the new one—a tall, skinny man with a missing eye and a weathered-gray face was gagged and dazed from the blow against the side of his head. 

“I was just asking this one if wanted to confess any of his sins freely before I started—you know how I like to be fair and give them the chance to be honest with me.” Yes. Kadar was the soul of justice. “When this other came through the back of the house calling out ‘Abbas! Abbas!’. He saw me and attempted to ran but I caught him when he fell by the front door. Look at the sand sticking to him.” There were streaks of sparkling pink going across his face. 

“That is interesting. How old must he be?” Malik said.

“Forty? Fifty? He could be eighty. It does not matter does it? The quality of the meat you’re trading? He’s a virgin and he’s a friend of this fat, greasy fellow here. Any man that would befriend this beast does not deserve to live in our home. Should I turn the greasy one into the council? He promised he’s ready to admit his faults.” Kadar sounded as reasonable as he looked when there was no knife in his hand. 

Malik shrugged. “Either way he will die. Do you want to make an example of him?” Malik pulled at the ropes tying the men together and dragged the brittle old man to his feet. “If you do not care for the idea of a public execution, then do whatever you want with him. The people will understand.” 

\--

A captain met him at the door. She wasn’t in charge of the bartering of one virgin for another but she informed him with a long sigh and a cocked up eyebrow that this pitiful, bent and withered old man he’d brought to replace the vibrant, virile man he hoped to leave with would take quite a bit of convincing. 

The old man that inspected the new stock burst into a great spell of wheezing laughter when he saw the offering that Malik brought. The old man he was dragging around (by an elbow with very little resistance) was offended to be laughed at. The gag kept him from protesting but he shook his shoulders in defiance and tried to pull free of the complicated knots holding his arms behind his back. 

“It has long been establish that the quality of the meat is not more significant than the proper quantity of the offerings,” Malik said. He motioned at the old man. “He is a virgin.” Although how he’d made it so far into his life with such a burden was beyond reason. “With him, we reduce the risk that one of the sacrifices will try to run.”

The old man nodded. He considered it for a moment with shrewd, squinting eyes and then shrugged. “You have been a good servant for our Gods, Malik. You have served us for many years without incident. Your accomplishments are many and consistent. You may take the virgin you have chosen and have a happy marriage. I will take this beaten leather to the first hall. They will have to soak him in a bath of herbs to make him worthy of the feast.”

“Thank you, sir,” Malik said. 

\--

The fourth hall was devoid of sound after the busy, bright streets of the city. The darkness was hard to see through so Malik found his way with a hand against the wall until he reached the open pool of light coming from the cell. The older guard nodded his head with approval when Malik showed him the papers granting Altair freedom (on the provision that he be Malik’s spouse) before excusing himself a knowing wink.

“Did you kill Abbas?” Altair asked. He was sitting in the middle of the floor of the cell, legs crossed in front of him and skin a brilliant array of color. “Did he beg for his life?”

“I did not,” Malik said. “My brother did. He does not like men who prey on children. Why should I spare your life?” He tucked the papers away in his things he kept in the box by his poor bed. When everything was packed, he stood up and put his arm against the bars and watched Altair walking closer to him. 

Altair put his arm against the bar opposite him and tilted his head to the side. “The sand you threw into my mouth tastes like piss,” Altair said again. He looked down at the lock on the bars. “Maybe we can talk after we’ve rinsed it out?”

“I cannot taste it,” Malik said. “Why should I spare your life?”

“Because when you release me, I will spare yours.” It was not much of a thing to say but enough of an acknowledgement of Altair’s place in this world to be an answer. Altair was not the manic murderer that Kadar was, well hidden in plain sight, but a killer nonetheless. There was no knowing his purpose from those words. If he was one of the men that served the Gods purpose by hunting down unworthy men or if he killed for an unjustifiable reason. There was only knowing that the strength in his body and the steely resolve of his unshakeable fearlessness was born of his occupation. 

Malik pulled the key from around his neck and unlocked the door of the cell. He motioned Altair out, into the hall and the illusion of freedom that escape from the close-cut four walls of his cell provided. They were still contained and would remain so until they consummated their marriage. “Then allow me to rinse the taste out of your mouth,” Malik said.


End file.
